About Myths
What is a Myth?
Long ago, people needed to make sense of the very frightening, confusing, and often mysterious world around them. The First People (Native Indians) accomplished this by creating myths, or stories that explained such things as birth, death, cycles of nature, the solar system and even the complex natures of the people themselves. Each Native American nation has its own distinctive tales and unique style of story-telling. In many tribes, story-telling is an art. Many of the myths from the various tribes reflect the environment, and culture of the people in that community.
Care has been taken to attribute the origin of each story to the tribe it originated from. In many instances the stories from one tribe may resemble the tales from another. This is because when the tribes migrated they usually encountered other groups from different locations. They brought and traded goods from each other, and many times entertained each other with myths and stories from their lands.
These stories have been passed down from one generation to the next, for many years. These wonderful tales almost always contain morals and values for young children (and adults). Hopefully these wonderful myths will continue on, entertaining new listeners, as much as they did the first Native People.
